Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett

of ours. The one thing I couldn’t figure out was the weird pole stuck in middle of each boat with another pole across it near the top. There seemed to be something bundled up under each of those crosspoles, buckskin maybe, or fakeskin, but I couldn’t think what purpose this might serve.
    Of course I knew from the start that these must be the boats that had brought the Johnfolk here, and when I got nearer I could see there were six seven Johnfolk beside them, sitting there with their metal spears. I would have liked to ask them about the boats, but there was something that scared me about these men—they were just men; they had no women with them—and I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself or to us Kneefolk. So I stayed a little way off, watching them from the shadow of the cliff.
    Presently three more of them came down from Veeklehouse. Two of them wore plain-colored wraps and carried spears, like the men who’d been with Greenstone. The third was a tall man wrapped in blue, with thick gray hair. As soon as they saw him, the men beside the boats scrambled to their feet.
    “All’s well here, Chief Dixon,” one of them said. “Will the Headmanson be down soon?”
    The tall guy was another Dixon, it seemed. He wasn’t much like ours!
    “I’ve no idea, John,” the tall man answered. “Right now he’s talking to a couple of little fishing girls with bare feet and nothing on them but bits of scraped buckskin round their bums. And one of them a holeface, too.”
    He stopped and glared across at me where I hid under the shadow of the cliff, and then began to talk again, but in a softer voice so I couldn’t hear what he said. But I still watched. And pretty soon Greenstone himself came down with another two men following after him, and I saw the tall man stand up to meet him. They were angry with each other, that was obvious, the tall man so angry that he raised his voice enough for me to hear some of his words.
    “Mother of Eden, boy, you’re Headmanson. You can’t just think about yourself! I know she’s pretty, but—”
    Greenstone spoke then, too quietly for me to hear, and then the tall man said a weird weird thing.
    “You’re heading for the fire, boy, the way you’re going! I mean that! You’re heading straight for the fire.”
    But then he looked over at me again, pointed, and spoke to the men with spears. I took the hint and headed back to our own boat.

Starlight Brooking
     
    “I never wanted any of you!” the wooden Gela screeched, while all of Family, inside their little wooden box, searched the ground around her on their hands and knees. “Least of all you, Tommy. Why would I want to be with a man who took me away forever from Earth?”
    But they never found the thing she’d lost, and one by one they grew old and died until the box was empty and silent.
    We all waited, and soon a new character appeared, a horrible creature with an ugly grin on its wooden face. None of us Kneefolk knew who it was, but everyone else there had recognized him at once, and they all stood up together and hissed and booed.
    The ugly creature laughed.
    “You know who I am, all right, don’t you?” it screeched. “I’m John Redlantern. I’m Juicy John. I hate sharing things. I hate having to fit in. And specially I hate—”
    He broke off. He’d seen something on the ground.
    “Harry’s dick!” he muttered as he bent down. “What’s this? Surely it can’t be   ...?”
    Even though his wooden face couldn’t move, you could somehow sense the moment when he knew .
    “It is !” he shrieked. “It’s Gela’s ring! It’s the ring of the Mother of Eden!”
    Everyone jeered and hissed.
    “Why should I care what you lot think?” John Redlantern sneered out at us. “I’ve got our mother to myself now! I’ve got the mother and all her power!”
    “I don’t feel too good,” I told Uncle Dixon. I had to shout so he could hear me over the boos and jeers. “I think I’ll go down to the